Monthly Archives: October 2013

A statue of Imre Nagy, a key figure in the ‘Hungarian Uprising’ of 1956. (Author: Adam78; Source: here)

Hungary, 1956: Blood on the streets and in the water

There is something profound and satisfying about the victory of the underdog. It is a fundamental part of the human story reaching back into ancient tales, such as those great matches like David and Goliath from the First Book of Samuel and Aesop’s tale of that tortoise sneaking ahead of a rather cocky hare; they touch into something profound and powerful in the human psyche. Whether it be because of size, age, wealth or weapons, we seem to rejoice in the victory of the weaker or out-numbered force, unless we happen to be on the other side, of course. There is always a story behind such victories, bringing a need to find the cause behind the unexpected result.

The history of sport, of course, provides so many of the most satisfying examples of the mighty being humbled by the lesser power: Germany’s Max Schmeling knocking out the great Joe Louis in 1936; the USA soccer team stunning the world when they beat England 1-0 at the 1950 World Cup and Sunderland winning the FA Cup in 1973 against the ‘unbeatable’ Leeds United; Arthur Ashe out thinking Jimmy Connors to win Wimbledon in 1975; Ireland crushing the mighty West Indies at cricket in 1969 after bowling them out for just 25. But it happens in more important matters, too: the Viet Minh withstanding the might of the USA in the Vietnam War; Mahatma Gandhi overcoming the British Empire through peaceful resistance to bring Indian independence; the Montgomery Bus Boycott seeing patience and perseverance rewarded by an end to segregation on the buses. The commitment, creativity and courage shown in these events from the last century can still serve as an inspiration today. And one of these stories is known as ‘Blood in the water’, an event which combines sport, violence and politics in a game of water-polo.

The story focuses on Hungary, so let’s check where it is by looking at a map of central Europe. today, it is a country of about 10 million people today, one which has a very long and proud tradition; it was once a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The empire fought with Germany in the Great War (1914-18) before being divided up by the ‘Treaty of Triannon’ (1920), which was part of those agreements which are usually grouped together as ‘The Treaty of Versailles’. Hungary as we know it today was, therefore, created in the wake of the Great War.

Anyway, now for a little background about the country. Hungary’s country’s capital city is Budapest, a fine place split by the River Danube, the second longest river in Europe which starts in Germany and flows nearly 1800 miles down to the Black Sea. The city is in two halves, the older part being ‘Buda’ on the western side of the river and the newer being ‘Pest’ on the east. The Hungarian language is very unusual, having links with Finnish and Estonian but not much else, so don’t expect to understand much should you visit; there are some very strange letter combinations, like ‘Magyarország’, the name for Hungary itself. By the way, the name ‘Hun’ for a German or Austro-Hungarian soldier in the Great War comes from the fact that the whole of the Central European region was settled by that tribe in the 5th century when they were led by ‘The Scourge of God’, Attila the Hun. That was probably a fairly obvious point but hopefully someone will appreciate it.

Although it has a rich history, Hungary tends to be a bit of a forgotten place for most people today but there are actually quite a few famous Hungarians that you should have heard of: Robert Capa, the photographer; Zsa Zsa Gabor, the actress; Erno Rubik, inventor of the Cube and other time-occupying devices; Lazslo Biro, inventor of the ball-point pen and the automatic gear box for cars; Ferenc Puskas, one of the greatest footballers of all time; Calvin Klein, fashion, and Estee Lauder, make-up; Drew Barrymore, Paul Newman and Tony Curtis are famous actors from a Hungarian background; Bartok and Liszt, are well-known composers; and tennis champion Monica Seles was also from Hungary.

Hungary was profoundly affected by defeat in the Great War. As mentioned above, the ‘Treaty of Trianon’ in 1920 saw similar punishments placed on the country as had been put on Germany by the more famous ‘Treaty of Versailles’. And just as in Germany, deep resentment was felt by the leaders and the people as the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a long and hugely important history as part of the Habsburg (or Hapsburg) domain. This resentment proved to be a potent force, so that when the new Hungary was created, it took little time before it came under the control of a right-wing dictator. This was a less than brilliant but impeccably dressed naval officer called Admiral Horthy Miklos (1868-1957). Despite his limitations, Horthy was actually the longest surviving Fascist dictator of the inter-war period, ruling from 1920 to 1944 and just out-lasting Benito Musssolini in Italy. His position at the head of a fascist government was a sign of the frustration and anger at the defeat in the Great War, and its retreat into narrow and aggressive nationalist thinking echoed that seen elsewhere in the defeated nations.

Admiral Horthy Miklos (as the surname comes first in Hungarian). One can only admire the hand on the sword, the uniform and the fine array of medals. (Author: unknown; Source: here)

The strong sense of nationalism in Hungary, a country which knew its traditions well, was only natural in a place which saw itself as being at the heart of Central European culture and learning. In the early 20th century, Hungary was a rather important country, being relatively wealthy and well-educated, and occupying a crucial region geographically. The country was used to making alliances, having been tied in with Austria and ruling so many other regions, so it was quite normal to enjoy strong political relations with the likes of Germany and Italy in the inter-war period. The humiliation of 1914-18 drove the country into the hands of the right-wing and so it was only natural that when World War II started, the country would fight alongside the Nazis. Without going into an analysis of the experiences of Hungary during World War II, for they are a major story in their own right, it is vital to know that it was the Soviet forces, the Red Army, which took control in 1945. Obviously, this left the country under the influence of Joseph Stalin and Communism, a massive ideological change compared to what had gone before. Naturally, Budapest was one of those cities Churchill referred to in 1946 as being one of ‘the ancient capitals of Europe’ which were on the wrong side of the ‘Iron Curtain’. 1946 was actually the year in which Hungary entered the record books as the country which suffered the very worst hyper-inflation of all time, its price rises even dwarfing those of Germany in 1922-23. As with Germany, it was reparations which were at the heart of the problem, although this time the payments had to be made to the USSR. The inflation rate of 41 900 000 000 000 000% meant prices were doubling every 13 hours and the government issued the highest value note of all time, the 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 pengo; the numbers were written quite small so that they could fit on. These numbers are so big that they become meaningless but it’s still good to know such things.

By the end of the war, Admiral Horthy had, of course, been forced to pack up his rather extensive wardrobe and move off into exile, finally arriving in Portugal via an appearance at the Nuremberg trials and some time living in Germany. By 1948, Hungary’s transformation from Fascism to Communism was complete as it joined the other East European countries under Stalin’s rule. A brief period of apparent liberty for the Hungarians had ended with the arrival in power of the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Rákosi Mátyás. A revolutionary going back to the days which had seen Horthy come to power, Rákosi was a particularly nasty man who was a true disciple of Stalin. He was known to the Hungarian people as ‘Old Arse Head’, and only a photo will suffice to explain this rather unpleasant but accurate description; while one should not judge people on looks alone, you will probably find yourself in agreement with the people on this one.

Even though he is sort of smiling in this picture, don’t be fooled; Rákosi was a deeply unpleasant man who oversaw the removal of many innocent people through the work of the AVO, the secret police. Several hundred thousand people disappeared in purges between 1948 and 1956 as he earned one of his other nicknames, ‘The Bald Murderer’. The Communist Party dominated life in Hungary as Rákosi proved his loyalty, and lack of imagination, by closely following Stalin’s policies of the Thirties. Opposition voices were crushed as he sought to impose totalitarian rule but then it all came to a sudden halt in 1956, three years after the death of his hero in Moscow.

Rákosi joined the various other leaders of the USSR’s satellite nations in Moscow for the XXth Party Congress. In the closed session for which the congress became famous, he was seen to go pale as he listened to Nikita Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’. The implications of this astonishing attack on Stalin was a clear sign of changes to come, a message soon heard and understood by the people as well as the leaders. Rákosi quickly became a victim of the new era and he disappeared from power and, quite naturally, the people of Hungary believed a better life awaited them; change following such a tyrant had to be for the better. This belief was soon strengthened by events in Poland, where there was an uprising in October, 1956. A significant outcome of this was that, for the first time, the local Communist Party was allowed to choose its own leader, Wladyslaw Gomulka. Admittedly, they had to chose someone who was ‘acceptable’ to Moscow but even so, this was a sign of change and ‘relaxation’ under Khrushchev; he was not as controlling as Stalin. To the people and the politicians, it really looked as though Khrushchev was acting on his speech by allowing greater freedom in some areas of life. In Budapest, there was a sense of hope and determination in the population that wanted to make that change real but few could have expected where it would lead them. there would be blood on the streets and in the water as a consequence of what happened next.

The basic details of the events of October-November 1956, the so-called ‘Hungarian Uprising’ or ‘Hungarian Revolution’, are quite straight-forward. The uprising developed as a result of anger and frustration at life under Communist rule. Led by students in particular, there were protests and calls for greater freedom of speech, improved living conditions, and an end to the controls from Moscow and oppression by the state forces. In a crucial and symbolic act, the protesters took control of the radio station in Budapest. naturally, they met opposition from the AVO, the police and the army, both Hungarian and Soviet, with fighting and destruction on a significant scale. People cut the Communist symbols from the centre of the Hungarian flags and launched revenge attacks on the much-hated AVO; many were executed in public. There was violence on the streets as vigilantes used any weapons they could find against the official powers.

The extraordinary anger of the common people flooded out in attacks against the AVO, the secret police, as this photo of a street execution shows. (Author: unknown, Source: here)

But then, to everyone’s relief, a peace descended as the Red Army and the Hungarian forces withdrew. Khrushchev was clearly going to act in a different way from that which Stalin would have. The people seem to have believed the reports that were coming from Radio Free Europe, an American backed station, which seemed to offer support to the rebels, suggesting that the people were not fighting alone but would have American and Western support. With their hopes raised so high, the people looked to establish even greater freedoms, choosing Imre Nagy (1897-1959), as the new Prime Minister. Nagy (pronounced ‘Narj’) was a far more moderate Communist than most politicians and was seen as a compromise candidate, a figure who might introduce change while still being acceptable to Moscow. He would later be called a hero but at the time Nagy lacked both awareness and courage, always seeming to be playing catch up with the people and misjudging the tone of the rebellion.

Imre Nagy, the leading Communist who was chosen to be the figure-head of the Hungarian Uprising. (Author: unknown; Source: here)

Inn the end, though, it did not really matter because, after a short respite, the Red Army returned in force, with support from the Warsaw Pact forces, and took a ruthless revenge. The casualties were high on both sides as the uprising was dramatically and decisively crushed. the huge statue of Joseph Stalin in Budapest might have been destroyed, and Stalin himself might have been criticised in Moscow, but Khrushchev was not soft, especially when he had the threat of his own destruction hanging over him from hard-liners in the Party and the Red Army. Over 2500 Hungarians died in the fighting between 23rd October and 10th November. Another 13 000 were injured and over 200 000 would flee the country soon after. 700 Communist soldiers died, some being shot by their own officers for refusing to attack civilians. Imre Nagy, the rather weak and unwilling leader of a ‘free’ Hungary, would later be executed, just one of the many to die. The ‘promised’ help from the West never came to the Hungarian people as US President Eisenhower was simply not prepared to risk a world war over a small Eastern Bloc country like Hungary. In addition to that, any hopes of gathering a Western alliance together to help Hungary were thrown into turmoil by the Suez Crisis which saw Britain, France and Israel make an unsuccessful attempt to impose their will in Egypt. Hungary was crushed. Thousands were dead, wounded or in prison. Fear, anger and a sense of betrayal were in many people’s hearts.

Crowds gather around the giant statue of Stalin after it was pulled down in Budapest. (Author: unknown; Source: here)

Considering the terrible state of affairs, it might seem strange but salvation of a kind was at hand for the Hungarian people. In the shadow of the greatest horror and suffering, a small sign of hope was to be found in a swimming pool 9 000 miles away from Budapest. because, while there had been blood on the streets of Hungary, there was also to be blood in the water in Melbourne, Australia. Hungary has a great tradition of swimming. Outdoor pools are very common and many Hungarians are superb swimmers. They also have a great tradition of playing water polo, one of the toughest of all sports. Rather like handball but played in the water, teams of seven a side pass a ball to each other before attempting to score goals by throwing the ball into a net, like a small football goal. And like handball and basketball, it is supposed to be a game of no contact, a rule ignored by almost every team. Water polo is a tough game but it was never meant to be as violent as it got in 1956.

The Melbourne Olympics of 1956 were the first to be held in the northern winter months because Australia, of course, is in the southern hemisphere. This meant that it started just after the ‘Hungarian Uprising’ had ended in such a violent defeat for the ordinary people, the rebels of the country. The Hungarian water polo team travelled to Melbourne as one of the strongest contenders for the gold medal. But their journey to the games, and the competition itself, was over-shadowed by the events at home. The team made steady progress through the competition before reaching the semi-finals where they ended up facing the team from the Soviet Union. Traditionally, the two countries were great rivals but that took on a new level of enmity, thanks, of course, to the Moscow’s violent crushing of the revolution. The Hungarian team had been at a camp overlooking Budapest when the rebellion began. They had seen the smoke and heard the gun-fire before they were flown out to Australia. Reports of casualties and destruction had reached them so that they knew that in facing the Soviet Union they were doing more than playing a game; this was a rare opportunity for revenge, striking a blow for their friends and others who had fought and suffered at the hands of the AVO, the police and the tanks of the Red Army.

The match became the most famous in water polo’s history. It became known as the ‘Blood in the Water’ match, after violence erupted throughout the game. Players on both sides were kicked, bitten and punched but Hungary moved steadily ahead. They eventually won 4-0, refusing to show any respect to the team from the ‘senior’ country in Communism. Towards the end of the match, one of their star players, Ervin Zador (1935-2012), was punched so hard by his Soviet marker that he was cut above the eye. The crowd had been passionately involved in the match, as had both squads on the pool side, and this led to a riot. The referees, seeing that there was only a minute to play, abandoned the game, awarding the match to the Hungarians. Complaints were made by the Soviet team but to no avail; victory was given to the Hungarians who went on to take the gold medal by defeating Yugoslavia 2-1 in the final. But the real victory and the true glory rested on that semi-final victory. It was a triumph summed up in this famous photo of Zador.

After the tournament, many of the Hungarian team refused to return home, with some staying in Australia while others went to the USA. Ervin Zador himself went to the USA where he would stay involved with water polo and swimming. As a coach he looked after a promising young swimmer called Mark Spitz, the man who would go on to set an Olympic record in 1972 by winning seven gold medals in the pool at Munich. But he will always be remembered in Hungary for spilling his blood for the glory of his country against their greatest enemy, one small cut to set against the blood of thousands.

‘All I could think about was, ‘Could I play the next match?’’ Ervin Zador, Water-Polo player

In 2008, this square in London was re-named to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of ‘Empire Windrush’. (Author: Felix-Felix; Source: here)

Empire Windrush: helping the ‘Mother Country’.

‘These people have British passports and they must be allowed to land…Anyway, they will not last a winter here.’Arthur Creech Jones, Colonial Secretary.

22nd June, 1948. At Sheffield, the mighty Australian cricket team, ‘The Invincibles’, led by the great Don Bradman, were playing out a rather dull draw against Yorkshire. On the island of Jura off the west coast of Scotland, George Orwell was finishing ‘1984’. In London, the final preparations for the Olympic Games were in full swing ahead of the opening ceremony set for the end of July. In Germany, the Deutsche Mark had just been introduced, leading to the blockade of Berlin and the ‘Berlin Airlift’. War was on-going in Israel and the Communists had taken control of Czechoslovakia. And in just two weeks time, on 5th July, the new National Health Service was to start in Britain. These were hugely important and interesting times.

One of the most important events of that day, though, was taking place almost unseen and unheard at Tilbury Docks on the River Thames. The event was the arrival of a small group of passengers from the Caribbean who had arrived on the Essex coast on a very ordinary ship, the ‘Empire Windrush’. The arrival of a boat-load of immigrants from the West Indies, then part of the British Empire, attracted some attention from the media but there was very little interest overall and the significance was not grasped then nor in the years immediately following. This was a change which would impact on language, music, fashion, sport and food. Politics, culture and laws would be affected – and it would raise issues never considered before. The arrival of the ‘Empire Windrush’, marked a new phase in British life, the moment when Britain took a major step towards being a multi-national, multi-racial, multi-cultural society. But those first arrivals had no intention of having such a grand impact and most only intended to stay for a few years at the most. Why did they come to Britain just after the war? Why come to a country with a notoriously dull climate? Why live in a place where rationing still dominated the weekly shopping?Why take such a risk?

‘Empire Windrush’ brought 492 passengers from the West Indies on that June day. Many were wrapped up against the cold even though it was summer, while others wore their ‘Sunday best’ or ‘Church clothes’. Some leaped up and down as they were met by friends and family. For some, their arrival was a return as they had lived, worked and fought in Britain during World War II, when they had volunteered for the ‘Mother Country’. The ties between Britain and the Caribbean were strong as the West Indies were part of the British Empire, building trade, cultural, sporting and tourist links. These ties were further strengthened in 1948 when Parliament passed the ‘Nationality Act’, an incredibly important and often forgotten piece of legislation. It gave all members of the British Commonwealth the right to visit, and the right to live in, Britain. 22nd June, 1948, was a hugely important day.

A child’s ration book from WWII. Rationing remained in place in the UK until well into the 1950’s. (Author: National Archive; Source: here)

But there was no paradise for the 492 visitors at Tilbury. Britain after the war was a country on its knees, desperately seeking a way towards recovery after the war. It has often been said that the best thing about World War II for Britain was winning it and the worst thing was winning it. No one would want to swap victory for defeat, especially in such a hugely significant and ideological conflict, but the cost of victory crippled the country financially. By 1947, Britain was bankrupt and there were huge consequences politically as it was unable to meet its commitments to protect its spheres of influence as agreed at Yalta and Potsdam. This was a humiliation but also a situation that demanded urgent action. Things came to a head in 1946 during the Greek Civil War, a conflict which had begun as World War II ended. Britain had to call an end to its support for the right-wing, pro-monarchist forces who were fighting the Communist rebels. The USA had to step in and it led to President Truman’s request to Congress for the funds to take on the responsibility for opposing the growth of Communism around the globe. Britain’s financial collapse was, therefore, the trigger for ‘Truman Doctrine’ as it developed from George Kennan’s ‘Long Telegram’ of February 1946, the policy which developed into containment. In that way, Britain’s economic crisis, one of the reasons for the arrival of the ‘Empire Windrush’, was also connected to the rapid rise of the USA into a ‘Superpower’.

Britain was struggling most of all because it had been forced to borrow so much money to fight the war. Actually during the war, the USA had operated a generous system called ‘Lend-Lease’, which meant goods were given to Britain, the USSR, China and other allies on a ‘use or return’ basis. They were to be used in fighting the war; if they were destroyed, so be it; if they were not, they could be returned. However, as the war ended so did ‘Lend-Lease’ but a series of loans and rents to the USA, which Britain had to repay, remained. Britain faced debt on a new scale. In fact the last repayment on those wartime loans to the USA was only made by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, at the end of 2006.

It must be remembered that in the 1920s and the 1930s, Britain had also been struggling economically. As the first country to have industrialised, Britain had developed technology and products which had started the ball rolling in industry but it had then fallen behind. Germany and the USA had caught up with, and then overtaken, Britain’s industrial power by about 1900. and then they had pushed ahead, partly by building on British technology and learning from her mistakes. So, for example, they had moved beyond steam power and coal to embrace cheaper and more efficient electricity. Britain’s position as a great power was always dependent to a large degree on its vast overseas Empire and that control was increasingly tenuous both during and immediately after the war: trade was badly disrupted during the war and increasing unrest developed in the ‘colonies’ afterwards, epitomised by Indian independence in 1947. Britain actually faced a situation similar to the economic and industrial issues of the USSR from about 1960 onwards: old, inefficient technology and an inflexible, unskilled workforce. Times were hard and change was needed but little happened.

Another factor in these economic troubles was that Britain had been heavily bombed during the war but it had not seen anywhere near the level of the destruction suffered by Germany, Japan, Italy, France and other rivals. In this period, there was a major change of political leadership as the old powers, like Britain and France, were replaced by the new ‘Superpowers’, the USA and the USSR. At the heart of the changes in the Western world, the USA took on an aggressive, dynamic role, using its enormous wealth to rebuild Europe, buying influence and creating a barrier to contain Communist expansion. This was seen most clearly in the ‘Marshall Plan’, the politically motivated economic recovery package funded by the USA and targeted at Europe and Japan as a means of ensuring that these countries remained capitalist and democratic. The resources for this huge project came from the USA alone and not from Britain which had neither the money nor the capacity to take that lead role.

Britain had desperate need of that aid itself and received a huge amount of money from the USA, more than any other country, in fact. But because many of Britain’s factories and its infrastructure (like the roads, railways and power supply) were more or less intact, they were rebuilt but not replaced. In Germany, by contrast, the destruction was on a whole different scale and things had to start from scratch: new water supplies, new power systems, new railways, new cities – and new attitudes. In the very short term this meant greater hardship but it soon brought many economic benefits to those countries which had suffered most in Western Europe. One only has to visit European cities like Berlin, Amsterdam and Brussels, to see the impact of this even now, in the broader streets, more efficient public transport and faster train travel than that enjoyed in Britain. Germany, Japan and other countries could not avoid the massive issues they faced: destruction had been almost total. Britain had the economic burdens of victory and the psychological baggage that came from seeing itself as ‘superior’ to those it had defeated; it carried on as best it could but it was trying to cling on to its old glories. And those days were over.

But going back to Tilbury, the people who arrived on the ‘Empire Windrush’ were not tourists; they were workers. They came because they were needed by Britain. They had been invited to come to Britain to work and so help the country recover after the war. The idyllic images of the Caribbean actually masked the widespread problems of poverty and a lack of job opportunities, so the 492 were not alone in travelling for work. Many moved within the West Indies while many others went to the USA and Canada, always looking for work. Until World War II, few had come to Britain but then they came to fight in the war, supporting the ‘Mother Country’. Some settled here afterwards but others returned home. And, in 1948, they came back, encouraged by Britain’s politicians who needed their help in re-building the country, to restore the economy and re-establish its links with the Empire.

Clement Attlee, Prime Minister from 1945-51. His concern for the poorest in society had been inspired in part by his time working in the East End of London as a young man. (Author: Unknown; Source: here)

The need for workers was especially important for the Labour Government of Clement Attlee with its extraordinary plans for a new Britain with many nationalised industries and the creation of the Welfare State, most importantly the new National Health Service. There was a major shortage of labour in many areas, though, including nursing, as well as low-skilled jobs, like cleaning and the transport sector. In filling these gaps, the many migrant workers who were to follow in the footsteps of those who travelled on the ‘Empire Windrush’, were playing a vital role for Britain but this soon got over-shadowed by bigger ‘issues’. The number of people immigrating to Britain from the Caribbean grew so that over 60 000 arrived in 1961, a figure many people considered too high. Competition for jobs, housing, pay and the like meant rising tension, especially between ethnic minorities in white working class areas.

Despite the contribution made by many immigrant workers to the British economy in the two decades after the arrival of ‘Empire Windrush’, tensions mounted in several areas. Increasing numbers of people arrived from Britain’s former colonies, seeking work and a new life, but also requiring accommodation, education, health care and the like. Differences in language, culture, religion and music can often inspire excitement and fear in equal measure and such was the case in Britain. There was undoubtedly widespread racism in many parts of the country; white immigrants were never treated with the same fear and anger which was shown to people from the West Indies, Africa and India, for example. Things came to a head in 1968, when Enoch Powell, a Conservative MP who had actually been one of those who had encouraged people from the Caribbean to come to Britain after the war, made an infamous speech which became known as the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. Powell was not saying that blood ‘should’ flow but that it ‘would’ flow from violence linked with racial tension unless ‘non-white’ immigration ended. Although he presented himself as being a reasonable voice expressing concerns based on what he had heard and seen, his proposal that non-white people already in Britain should be ‘encouraged to go home’ certainly inflamed relationships in society. Powell spoke for many people in Britain at that time but he personally became the focus of the blame that followed the rise in racial tension. Non-white immigrants had been an easy target for attack as they physically and culturally stood out on the streets of Nottingham or Notting Hill, both of which had seen racial unrest and violence in the 1950s. There was far less hostility to immigrants from Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Europe for the simple reason of skin colour.

Enoch Powell (1912-1998), a Conservative MP (1950-1974) and an Ulster Unionist MP (1974-1987). His ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech was made in 1968 but it is often referred to today when issues linked with immigration and racism come up. (Author: Allan Warren; Source: here)

It might be worth quoting a little bit of Powell’s speech here as it is so famous but also because it is not always as simple as it might appear. Powell was an intelligent man, a popular MP and a politician who wanted to reflect what people told him in terms of their concerns; many saw him as at least a future leader of the Conservatives and, therefore, a future prime Minister. He has been presented as a bit of a ‘mad-man’ over the years but, whether or not he was right or wrong, he acted in a way that really did reflect the concerns of many of his constituents and of the ordinary people who wrote to him. His comments also reflected many in people in the country at large and it is important that his infamous words should be put into some sort of context, otherwise any unpopular message (and the messenger) from the past can too easily be dismissed as a lunatic. Enoch Powell reflected the values and fears of many people at the time and his views remain embedded in the ideas of numerous politicians and many parts of society today, despite what might be said in public. Here is a part of his long and complex speech which he made to the Conservative Association in Birmingham on 20th April 1968. It demands careful reflection and does not work well with a ‘soundbite’. His references to Kindertransport, Karl Marx and the Windrush are especially interesting.

For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum (bland or meaningless intellectual comments) they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”

That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic (violence and tension linked with the Civil Rights Movement) but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century.

Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

Migration is a common feature of life, for British people as much as any other nationality. Thousands of people emigrate from Britain each year and they value the opportunity. No one thinks of them as doing anything immoral as they move abroad for work or retirement, ignoring any negative impacts on local culture, wealth and welfare in the areas in which they settle. It is seen as something positive. Britain itself has a long tradition of opening its borders to people from abroad. It has been a very tolerant society welcoming those who face persecution, such as the Huguenots expelled from France in 1685 with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the Jewish children who arrived in the late 1930s on the ‘Kindertransport’ from Germany or even to Karl Marx who spent his last 30 years of life in London. The welcome to the new arrivals made by politicians to those on the Windrush reflected that but the problems began within conservative working class society. Racism presented itself as people tried to find accommodation and work, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes blatant but tension developed, mainly in the cities and industrial towns. The fact that workers from abroad were needed was forgotten and skin colour, language and cultural differences proved far more significant. In fact it was in the Trade Unions that much opposition was found as migrant workers were often paid lower wages, so undermining pay and conditions for existing workers. This was seen in the Post Office and in transport where migrant workers seen in larger numbers than elsewhere. White workers blocked opportunities for non-white colleagues as they feared change and the impact on their own pay and conditions; and some were simply racist and did not like people who were different. This was seen in the early 1960s when white bus drivers and some companies blocked a decision to allow black immigrants to become drivers. It may seem strange today but this happened in Bristol, for example, even though it was a move supported by the Trade Union and the employers.

Powell’s speech raised many issues, put the matter into a broad historical context and placed much of the blame for racial tension with the white community, all factors which are missed or ignored when quoting him. He was undoubtedly controversial but his message reflected something important about British attitudes and must not be dismissed without proper study.

Racial unrest in the 1950s and 1960s grew on the back of other social change. Groups like the ‘Teddy Boys’ and skinheads had right-wing nationalist attitudes, seeing foreigners as an easy and legitimate target for violence. The police were often seen to ignore or belittle racial crime, seeing it as just a part of life and something to be put up with if foreigners wanted to live in Britain. There was successful racial integration in some areas but there was a sense of disturbance and upheaval in many towns and some parts of the cities at the rapid pace of change in the ethnic mix of communities.

Britain might not have seen the level of violence, civil unrest and segregation that happened in the Southern States of the USA but racial tension was clearly present after World War II and still exists today, as the steady if low level of support for groups like the British National Party (BNP) and English Defence League (EDL) shows. Too many people forget that those first immigrants on the Empire Windrush were needed in Britain they were encouraged to come to help the country. They came out of choice but they worked, paid taxes and kept key industries going at a time of great hardship. Some people, even our supposedly informed politicians, forget such things, seeing obvious differences and ignoring some hidden truths from the past. Racial tension is widespread and is common in many different societies but that does not mean it is right and students of history and politics should be able to present a balanced informed argument backed by more than just some gut feelings and simplistic argument.

‘Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body – the producers and consumers themselves.’ Herbert H. Hoover

Herbert Hoover: A good man in power at a bad time.

Herbert Hoover was, by all accounts, a hard-working man, a clever man and a generous man. Hoover was almost certainly one of the best men ever to become President of the USA. He wanted to help the poor – and he did. He wanted to reward people who worked hard – and he did that too. He wanted to be a man of principle and integrity – and he managed that as well. Hoover was respected by those who knew him, a self-made millionaire who worked hard all of his life, a man f energy and action who never sat back or left important things to others.He was a man of principle and integrity. and yet, as president, Hoover is usually remembered as a weak and ineffective leader, a failure in the eyes of most people. So, just who was Herbert Henry Hoover and why did things go so very badly wrong for him?

The “Hoover Dam” was one of the great engineering achievements of its age. It was dedicated by President Roosevelt in 1935 and named in honour of Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the USA, but it was all a bit controversial. Still, it is now officially the highest dam in the western hemisphere and helps keep Las Vegas going, which may be a ‘good thing’. There are far worse things that were named in Hoover’s honour, as we shall see. (Author: snakefisch; Source: here)

Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) was a mining engineer by trade. Orphaned at the age of 9, he was highly motivated, intelligent and very hard-working. He did not go to high school but worked during the day and then did his studies at night school, showing the discipline and motivation that he, and many others, thought was essential for doing well in the USA. Hoover was brilliant at engineering and rose to become one of the world’s leading figures in mining. He made a fortune out of his work but he was never a greedy or selfish man. He wanted to use his skills, experience and money to help others. A great example of this was how he undertook a mission to go to Belgium during the Great War, 1914-18, to help the people displaced and suffering because of the fighting in the region. Using his own money and coordinating many volunteers, Hoover helped thousands of people by providing them with food, shelter and medical care. He was a true humanitarian and a genuinely good man. But in surveys to decide who was the best American President, Hoover rarely gets voted inside the top number 30, and recent polls put him at around 36 out of 44. Admittedly this puts him above Warren Harding at 41 and George W. Bush at 39, but it’s still pretty bad for this committed, generous Quaker who did so much to epitomise the ‘American Dream’.

The answer to the inevitable question, namely, ‘What went wrong for Mr. Hoover?’, echoes the words of Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister between 1957 and 1963. When asked by a young journalist what his biggest problem was as Prime Minister, Macmillan replied with the famous words: ‘Events, dear boy, events!’ This quote may be considered boring by many people and, indeed, might have been trivialised by over-use, but it is widely used for a reason: ‘events’ really are just about the most important thing in politics and few have suffered their curse quite like Herbert Hoover.

The event that shook the happy world of Herbert Hoover was one which is as big as they come: his world was totally messed up by the economic disaster which was the ‘Wall Street Crash’ of October 1929. The collapse of share prices at that time on Wall Street, the home of the New York Stock Exchange, heralded the massive and dramatic decline of the US economy. The ‘Great Crash’ triggered the world-wide ‘Great Depression’ that so dominated the 1930s and, through its impact on the Second World War, shaped the rest of the century. Looking back it was clear that serious problems were developing on the Stock Market during the 1920s, as things were simply too good for too long and for no particular reason. With hindsight, it is clear that ‘something’ should have been done by ‘somebody’ but that was not on the agenda at the time. When Hoover, standing as a Republican, won the presidential election of November, 1928, and took office in the following March, things looked as good as they ever had. In his Inaugural Speech, Hoover was even willing to proclaim that, ‘Given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this country’. The new President’s honourable goal and his fine words were to prove more than a little wide of the mark. The policies of the ‘previous eight years’, to which Hoover had referred in his speech, were those of his immediate predecessors, the Republican Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, both of whom are worth a mention in their own right. Therefore, we’ll take a little detour to look at these two very different men before getting back to Hoover.

Warren Gamaliel Harding (1865-1923) is generally considered to have been the worst US president in history, despite being blessed with one of the greatest second names ever. This is a little harsh because there were some seriously bad performances in the 1840s and 1850s who tend to get overlooked, including close contemporaries of Abraham Lincoln, like Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pearce, James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson. However, Harding does have a lot to commend him as a disaster of the first order, as his naiveté, gullibility and general foolishness were pretty hard to believe.

Harding was the successor to the famous Woodrow Wilson and was in office from 1920-23. He presided over the first years of prohibition, the start of the rise of the gangsters, and he did so with real style and aplomb, being oblivious to the growing political carnage around him. Harding never came to grips with the fact his friends, many of whom he appointed to high office, were far from being the nice, friendly, honest people he thought they were; in fact, they were astonishingly corrupt. They took huge advantage of their appointments to cut deals all over the place so as to make each other a nice little profit through business deals linked with Government projects. The biggest outrage was ‘The Tea-Pot Dome’ scandal in which the Minister for the Interior, Albert Fall, leased out Government-run oilfields to private companies in return for bribes and interest-free loans. Fall went to prison for his actions but several other officials broke the law under Harding. The whole Government was in a mess in those early years of the Twenties, with crime running almost out of control. Gangster related crime was running out of control around prohibition and corruption of Government and Police officials at every level was on the rise. Writing this brief paragraph makes it clear that Warren Harding deserves a full chapter of his own so this can end now really. Harding died quite suddenly and unexpectedly in 1923, well before he completed his term as president and it’s probably a good job he did as things would in all likelihood have got even worse. Two of his more controversial decisions were to stop American soldiers getting their ‘bonus’ payment after the Great War, while he also allowed trusts (monopolies) to become more powerful, both of which would have serious consequences for Herbert Hoover later on.

Mind you, it must be said that, after a dodgy few years in the early 1920s, one thing was going very well at the end of Harding’s time in office and that was the economy. Business in the USA was starting to boom in the post-war period and many people were getting significantly richer, especially those who were already rich. Ordinary workers saw slow but steady improvements and felt a sense of expectation that life would get better in the years to come. Confidence in the economy started to rise, a key factor for any country, and Harding did also sign the law giving women the vote. So spare at least one kind thought for Warren Harding, a man for whom life did not got off to the best of starts, as he did spend his early years being called ‘Winnie’ by his Mum.

Anyway, with Harding gone, the vice-president was required to step into office. This was the almost legendary Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933, President 1923-28). Coolidge liked to keep things quiet and simple. He didn’t believe in talking too much, saying ‘I never got hurt by what I didn’t say.’ Once he was asked by an exhausted colleague how he managed to look so well after a morning’s meetings. His colleague said he was worn out by talking at length to just four different people; Coolidge replied that that was his problem: ‘You talk to them.’ Coolidge’s approach was to ignore anything he could, almost boring people into sorting things out for themselves. It seemed to work in most people’s eyes – and at least the economy kept going well. Dorothy Parker, a noted wit of the time, when told that Coolidge had died, simply said, ‘How can they possibly tell?’, a cutting reference to his lack of energy and personality.

The quotation that Coolidge himself is most linked with, though, is, ‘The business of America is business’. In the ‘Roaring Twenties’, the idea that making money and getting rich was at the heart of being American seems to have come to the fore – and Coolidge presided over this. Mind you, for those who like a good quotation, it is worth remembering Coolidge also said that, ‘Civilisation and profit go hand in hand’, something highly questionable as you see mega-rich multi-nationals like Wal-Mart, KFC, McDonalds, Starbucks and the like, reach out from the USA and dominate almost every High Street in the world. But enough of such opinions and back to the Twenties, where most Americans were more than happy to have ‘laissez-faire’ and the small government policies of Calvin Coolidge.

The idea of business being at the heart of life, values and goals in the USA of the Twenties is clearly true. This decade was the ‘Jazz Age’, the boom time for nearly all Americans. Coolidge was a popular President, a leader whose policies were so light that they amounted to an almost total avoidance of intervention in the economy. In doing this he was in line with the values of the time; his victory in 1924′s election showed that the people wanted his way of working. The Republican Government followed laissez-faire policies, stepping back and doing as little as possible, leaving things to individuals and businesses who were free to do pretty much whatever they chose, paying the wages they wanted, working the hours they wanted, charging the prices they wanted. It all seemed to go pretty well throughout the decade as share prices boomed, profits grew and real wages rose a little. The people were happy, businesses were happy and politicians were happy with this set up; small Government was good so what could possibly go wrong? Or, as Hoover himself put it, ‘We shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this country’.

When he came into office, Hoover simply did what was expected of him and carried on the Republican policies which had been so successful and popular in the previous eight years. For any sensible politician, this was clearly the ‘right thing to do’ and the evidence was there: low unemployment, high profits, a booming stock market, rising confidence, happy workers and even happier bosses. Everyone agreed that they wanted ‘small Government’ which kept interference to a minimum and left it to people and businesses to get on with their own thing. Hoover simply did what was wanted and sat back to watch things unravel in a really big, horrible, bad sort of way. The problems first showed up on Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, but they had started elsewhere – and for this you need to understand a basic thing or two about economics, shares, business and the like. You might want to have a break before reading this bit so come back when you’re ready, maybe bringing a nice hot drink and a biscuit with you – but get it yourself, don’t leave it up to your Mum or someone else to get it for you.

Right, stocks and shares first. These are basically ‘parts’ of companies that people can buy. A business can sometimes be sold in sections to investors, people who put money into the company for a variety of reasons but always with a view to making more money. The money invested can be used by the company to do a variety of things, like buying new machinery, developing new products, creating new markets, doing research, building factories and the like. In very simple terms, investors have two ways of making money: they are entitled to a share of the profits at the end of the year and they can sell their shares to another investor for more than they paid for them (assuming the company’s value has increased in the meantime). Firstly, if you own 10% of the shares, in theory you can take 10% of the profits which are declared at the end of the year. This is known as the ‘dividend’. Secondly, if you buy your 100 shares for £1 each, you pay £100; if the price goes up to £2 a share and you sell them all then you make £100 profit. Easy money. Or it can be. Sometimes.

Trading in shares is an easy way to make money as long as certain things happen, of course. You have to have enough spare money to buy a decent number of shares, the company has to make decent profits and things have to look positive for the future; in this situation, things are positive and an investor can make good money as the share price rises. But why do share prices go up? And what affects the price of a share? The second point first: the number of shares, the value of the company, confidence in the company, how competing companies are doing and how many people want the shares will all affect the price of any share. But the one thing that is guaranteed to make prices go up is the answer to the first question: that is expected profits. It’s not so much how well a company has done in the past as what people expect to happen in future that will really affect a share price. At least that should be the key factor in rising share prices: good prospects and rising profits should see share prices rise; bad prospects, falling profits or even losses ahead should see them fall.

On Wall Street in the late 1920s, things got more than a bit silly and the basic rules, like looking at profits and what was going to happen in future, were ignored by more and more investors. Many experienced investors knew there was a problem with numerous companies around 1927, as share prices were rising when profits were falling. The Government knew there was a potential problem developing but they didn’t think it was their job to get involved so share prices went up and up and up, even though many observers knew that they should have been falling. Share prices rose because demand was high as lots of ordinary investors thought buying shares was the easy way to make money. When people realised there was a problem and that shares were over-priced, they came down quickly; in reality they went off a cliff and share prices crashed.

Shares are actually bought and sold on a stock market. Before 1920, nearly all the people who dealt in shares were ‘professionals’, making a living by studying companies and investing their money for the medium and longer term (5 years or more). After the Great War of 1914-1918, the USA had done well economically and made lots of money so that increasing numbers of ordinary people had a little spare cash for the first time and some of them decided to invest it. But this really meant that they ‘gambled’ it on the stock market. Buying and selling shares is always a gamble because the investor can win or lose because the price can go down as well as up. Most of the time, some share prices go up but others fall because not all companies do well at the same time.

Dealing with shares is a bit like an auction in that the number of shares is limited. As more people want shares in a particular company, the higher the price will go. When you are gambling, though, it’s useful to study the form of the horse or team you are backing; when you are at an auction, it’s good to have a bit of knowledge or skill so that you know what you are buying. Few people would buy a vase or a painting just on a ‘feeling’; if they are serious investors, they would want to make a judgement on the real value of the product they intend to buy. The same is true for shares but on the stock market during the 1920s, none of this really mattered because shares in almost every company were doing well and many were doing superbly. Every investor would win, it seemed, as there was no risk of a ‘bad buy’. In many areas, buying shares became the way to make easy money and so more and more people started buying shares, whether or not they knew anything about economics and business. Some people became millionaires almost overnight, it seemed, and a wave of optimism and celebration grew into complacency and expectation. Many people did whatever they could to get some spare cash to buy shares. And as the prices rose they believed they had lots more money. Many people believed they were suddenly rich and they bought property and goods, as well as more shares. Share prices were rising, people were rich…lovely.

But there was a problem. The money that many people held in shares was not ‘real’ money. It only became real when they sold their shares but people did not think like this. The share prices had risen and people expected them to keep on rising; in theory, they had lots of money but they didn’t want to sell their shares as they could expect to make even more money. Many people even borrowed money from the banks to buy shares and planned to pay off the loan later when they sold their shares and pocketed an easy profit. Imagine going to a bank today and saying you were going to use a loan to buy shares or to bet on a horse – they would never give it to you but, in those days, no questions were asked. Anyway, people used their ‘profits’ and borrowed more money to buy lots of the new goods that were available in the 1920s, goods like vacuum cleaners, radios, washing machines and, most of all, cars, especially the Model-T made by Mr. Henry Ford, the first car made by mass production methods.

Henry Ford next to a ‘Tin Lizzie’, his Model T. Ford’s production line would lead to one being produced every 24 seconds in the 1920s. Over 15 million were produced between 1908 and 1927. The saying, ‘You can have any colour as long as it’s black’, may or may not have been said by Ford but the Model T was only available in black after 1913. This was because Ford was obsessed with reducing costs and using just one colour did just that. (Author: Ford Motor Company; Source: here)

By September, 1929, the stock market and the economy had over-heated to a frightening degree and there were clear warning signs of troubles ahead. Share prices were far too high, based on company profits and widespread over-production, so that during the late summer and autumn of 1929, the rise in values first of all slowed, dropped, briefly recovered and then suddenly and totally collapsed. The famous ‘Wall Street Crash’ came in October 1929 and it triggered the collapse of the world economy and the start of the ‘Great Depression’. Share prices would not recover their full 1929 values on Wall Street until the early 1950s. And the US economy itself would only recover thanks to World War II.

The ‘Wall Street Crash’ and the ‘Great Depression’ meant disaster for President Hoover. He was held responsible for everything because he was in charge when it happened even though he had simply followed those laissez-faire Republican policies of Harding and Coolidge which had been so popular with everyone throughout the decade. He was left holding the blame for doing what was popular – but flawed. Such is the problem of events in the life of any politician but rarely has anyone been left in such a mess by doing the popular thing. However, what really did for Hoover was that, after the ‘Great Crash’, as the boom years faded into the terrible depression, he stood by those same policies; he would not intervene but left the recovery to the markets and to individuals, seeing that their energy and skills would sort things out just as they had in the good years. This was, to put it mildly, a mistake.

But what had actually gone wrong in the lead up to the ‘Wall Street Crash’? Let’s step back a little and see if Herbert Hoover was really to blame for what happened in 1929 and the years that followed. One massive reason for the crash was the over-production of many goods by US industries. A range of new products became widely available in the 1920s and the use of the production line saw more of them made more quickly and more cheaply. Radios, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and cars were among the goods that became ‘must haves’ for the majority of the population. Wages were rising a little but demand for these goods rose more, with advertising on radio and in newspapers creating a larger market. The development of sales by catalogues and mail order also extended the markets beyond the cities and out into small-town America. Many companies saw their profits rise and they built new factories and employed more people so as to make more goods. Planning ahead, based on past sales and high profits, many invested lots of money in new factories. This was fine until it became clear that many people already had a car, a radio, a washing machine and so on. Demand started to tail off but the factories were still producing the goods which had to be stock-piled or reduced in price. As has already been mentioned, profits actually began to fall in many companies from about 1927 but most people ignored the warning signs and kept buying shares. Experienced investors saw the problem and many sold their shares, making massive profits in the process. The Government knew there was a problem but no officials wanted to say anything or to interfere. The Republicans believed in ‘laissez-faire’ government, saying they should not interfere with things unless they absolutely had to – and the people certainly did not want the government to interfere if it would stop them making money. The warning signs for the economy had started under Coolidge, who did nothing, and Hoover just continued the same policies.

Another reason for the boom in share prices was that more and more credit (borrowed money) became available in the 1920s. With all the brilliant new goods being made, people wanted them and they wanted them immediately. Rather than saving up and then buying them as they had done in the past, people increasingly used H.P. or ‘Hire Purchase’ to get them. This meant they borrowed off the bank or the company itself, allowing people to have the goods straight away and then paying the money back over a year or so but with interest. This was fine while people had jobs and could afford to repay their loans but once the problems started, people were left in debt and companies saw their profits start to fall. Increased borrowing had actually had the effect of artificially increasing demand for goods so that company profits had leapt up and it led to them expand too quickly. Instead of people having saved up and buying only when they were able to, HP allowed them to buy immediately. This artificial increase in demand fed into over-production which was made worse by the fact that most goods had been built to last. Once people had bought their washing machine or vacuum cleaner, that was it for a good number of years; they didn’t break so they didn’t need replacing. This was one reason why manufacturers, developing a similar strategy of the Ford Motor Company, started to build in weaknesses to their products, meaning people would always need a replacement. But HP was popular with people and businesses, so the Republicans had no intention of stopping or controlling it; why should they interfere and limit choice?

Rising incomes in the early 1920’s contributed to the economic boom. Although some groups, like farmers and workers in the cotton mills and other traditional industries, did not do too well, most people in the big industrial cities had seen their incomes rise. Many of them had a bit of spare money for the first time. Through reports in newspapers and on the radio, people became aware of how easy it seemed to be to make money when buying shares on the stock market. During the 1920s, playing the stock market became more and more normal so that you were considered to be a ‘fool’ if you didn’t do it. The banks, many of which were small, one-town outfits, were able to lend money without restriction and so it was that many of them gave loans which allowed people to ‘buy on the margin’. This meant people borrowed money to buy shares with the aim of paying the bank loan back and pocketing the difference after the shares rose. As with HP impacting on sales of goods, so this provided a massive increase in share prices as it allowed the demand for shares to go up immediately as investors did not have to save up before buying shares. Many banks actually took money from their savers’ accounts and used it to buy shares for themselves, planning to pay it back into the accounts later on and keeping the profit. This is now illegal but at the time it was allowed.

Various other factors played a part in the boom of the 1920s, and the subsequent collapse of the economy. Monopolies, or ‘Trusts’, were allowed to develop in the USA without any restriction by the Republican Government. Business leaders liked monopolies as they allowed more control, higher prices and increased profits. The Trusts got greedy, though, expanded too quickly and fed into over-production. Another issue was tariffs, a tax placed on foreign goods coming into a country, which was a way of protecting local industry. In the 1920s, the Republicans had responded to requests for help in this way from US businesses, but other countries had retaliated by doing the same to US goods. While the American market was booming, they did not need to export goods, but when the Crash came and they wanted to sell goods abroad, they couldn’t because of the high prices brought on by the tariffs. In addition to this, as mentioned earlier,the new advertising industry exercised an extraordinary power over the population. Demand for goods rose as the radio, posters and magazines made people aware of the ‘wonderful benefits’ that could be found through these time and energy saving devices.

All of this shows the uncomfortable truth that, behind the boom and bust, was ordinary people, the people who make capitalism work on a day to day basis; if they don’t buy, then nothing happens. The average American became ever more optimistic and confident as the Twenties unfolded. Many were young, positive people, who wanted to grab every opportunity and make a better life for themselves and their families. They looked for the upside and ignored the warnings, believing in the full glory of the ‘American Dream’. In such an atmosphere, President Hoover had no real chance of controlling spending or investing by anyone. To have limited opportunities through legislation would have been considered un-Republican and anti-American. In an age when there was a growing fear of Communism, expressed in things like the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, no President could easily interfere in the operation of the free market. But, anyway, most of the damage was actually done before the 1928 election but people judge who ever happens to be in power at the time, so Hoover was to blame when Wall Street crashed in October 1929.

President Hoover failed to deal with the impact of the greatest economic crisis in modern history. The problems on Wall Street quickly spread across the USA and reverberated around the globe. One particular consequence of this was that banks which had loaned money to Germany and Austria now wanted that money back. This triggered an economic crisis which would eventually see Hitler come to power in 1933. Around the world, trade collapsed, unemployment rose and nationalism was strengthened as Governments tried to protect their own interests. The Great Depression would be at its worst in the years 1930 to 1933 but its impact defined the whole decade both in the USA and internationally.

Adolf Hitler came to power as Chancellor of Germany on 30th January, 1933, partly as a result of the ‘Great Depression’. (Author: Theo Eisenhart; Source: here)

In the USA, Hoover continued the Republican policy of ‘laissez-faire’ as he tried to deal with the economic fall-out after October 1929. He saw no reason to change policies: why should the government have to sort things out? They had not raised taxes or ran things when they were going well, so why should they increase spending and tell people what to do now that there were problems? The belief was that the markets would sort things out in time and people would have to look after themselves until that point. This was the idea of ‘rugged individualism’, something which people believed had made the USA ‘strong’, whereby people took responsibility for everything in their own lives. If they had no job, they should set up a business or move or get training. In good times, they should have saved so that they could later be secure in the bad times. If people wanted education or health care, they should save and pay for it all themselves. This was fine in theory but the USA was in crisis and Hoover looked cruel as he did little to help. When he did put money in to things, such as helping people keep their homes, there simply wasn’t enough of it and it was a case of ‘too little, too late’.

The incident which came to haunt Hoover most of all was his treatment of the ‘Bonus Marchers’. These men were a group of soldiers who had fought in the Great War and had been promised the payment of a bonus as a reward for winning the war. The bonus was not due to be paid until 1941 but many of the former soldiers were facing problems in 1931 because of the Depression. Unemployment had seen many of them lose their homes as well as their jobs and they faced an uncertain future. They organised themselves with a march on Washington, D.C., In the city, they built a ‘Hooverville’, a shanty town, named after the President. There were many such ‘Hoovervilles’ across the country, an indictment of Hoover’s handling of the crisis. The Bonus Marchers asked that their bonus be paid early because, just as they had helped the country in its hour of need during the war, they believed that they should be helped in their time of suffering. Instead of granting the request, police and troops were turned on the men. The protesters were beaten and shots were fired; four men died and many were injured. The picture of US troops firing on former soldiers horrified everyone and ensured that Hoover would be defeated in the election of 1932.

The story of the ‘Bonus Marchers’ was a tragic end to four years which should have been the fine presidency of a good, honest man. He was easily defeated in the Presidential Election of 1932 by Franklin D. Roosevelt who brought in the ‘New deal’ and the greatest Government intervention seen in the USA to that date. FDR would go onto win four terms in office and would lead the nation in World War II becoming regarded as one of the greatest Presidents of all time. In his shadow, most others would have looked like failures; the tragedy for Herbert Hoover was that, in the most public years of his life, he had failed so badly that history would judge him little more kindly than his own age.

And he had a long time to reflect on the events of these years as he only died in 1964, at the age of 90, the fourth oldest man to have been president.

A drawing of the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. (Author: T. Dart Walker; Source: here)

Removing your enemies 2: Presidents, Popes and Protesters

Following on from an early post about assassinations, here are five more, although that of Steve Biko was not necessarily planned as such and those on Pope John Paul II and President Franklin D. Roosevelt were important but failed attempts. We will start with the death of William McKinley who is one of the four US Presidents who have been assassinated while in office. When you think that two others have been wounded in assassination efforts and there have been numerous credible plots identified against another twelve, you realise why there are so many security guards around the White House. And the job seems to be getting riskier as the last eight presidents since Richard Nixon, have each faced at least one assassination plot, apparently.

William McKinley – 1901.

William McKinley (1843-1901, elected in 1896 and 1900) was the last US President of the 19th Century and the first one in the 20th Century, which is useful ‘Pub Quiz’ information. He was a popular Republican politician and most people were comfortable as he took office for a second term in the White House. The economy was doing well and the USA had recently taken control of Guam, Cuba and the Philippines, actions which reflected the growing power and confidence of the country. On 6th September, 1901, McKinley had just been on a visit to Niagara Falls when he went to an exhibition and was shot by a Michigan born man called Leon Czolgosz, who was 28 years old at the time. Some of McKinley’s last words were, ‘Be careful how you tell my wife’, which, it must be said, shows the most remarkable kindness under extreme pressure. He died eight days after the shooting, largely because of an infection in the stomach wound he suffered, an infection caused by material from his clothing. It was never made clear why Czolgosz killed McKinley but he himself was executed by electric chair in late October of the same year.

The death in office of any President, even one as little remembered today as McKinley, is always significant but some are more important than others; this was a hugely important event. The USA was not the world power it was to become in the Twentieth Century and its rise to global dominance came in part because of the removal of McKinley. As with the other presidents who have died in office, he was replaced by his vice-president. In this case it meant the arrival of Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) in the White House, a man whom many Americans see as one of the greatest and most dynamic presidents they ever had. Roosevelt certainly had a great energy and introduced a more dynamic foreign policy that saw the USA become far more involved in world affairs; his most famous line on that subject was ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’, meaning, ‘Be polite and sound reasonable but always be able to intimidate people with the threat of a very big army’. Roosevelt, who was a distant cousin of the later president Franklin Roosevelt, also organised the building of the Panama Canal which linked the Atlantic with the Pacific, and negotiated the peace between Russia and Japan to end the war of 1904-05. Of course, you probably know that ‘Teddy Bears’ are named after Theodore Roosevelt, thanks to an incident in which Roosevelt refused to shoot a tired old bear while on a hunting trip in Mississippi. Although the German company Steiff started making toy bears without knowing about this story, an American company was inspired by the story of ‘Teddy’s Bear’ and made them under that name. And that is how the most famous cuddly toy got its name – but you might well have never heard of him, or the bears, if William McKinley had lived to see out his time as President.

William McKinley: with such fine eyebrows he would have made an excellent ‘baddy’ in many fine TV shows of the 1960s, like ‘Stingray’ or ‘Thunderbirds’. (Author: Courtney Art Studio; Source: here)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) – 1933.

An attempt to kill Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), a man usually voted in the three greatest US Presidents of all time, was made in February, 1933, before he had actually been inaugurated as President of the USA. FDR was in Florida, making a speech from the back of a car when five shots rang out,. They were fired by a man by the name of Giuseppe Zangara. Zangara was Italian born and, like Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist. He had lived in the USA since 1923. He had a history of physical and mental ill-health. One fact about Zangara turns out to be of the greatest significance in this attempted killing; he was only five feet (152 cm) tall. When he was in the crowd around FDR, he could not see well enough to aim at the future President and so he had to stand on a small collapsible chair. As he aimed his pistol, Zangara slipped and he missed Roosevelt. He managed to fire four other shots before he was over-powered, though, wounding four different people. Most importantly, he hit Anton Cermak, the Mayor of Chicago, who died three weeks later. For the killing of Cermak and the attempt on FDR, Zangara was sent to the electric chair and died in March, 1933.

The attempt on Roosevelt’s life came just a month before he took office as President. It is no exaggeration to say that, had it succeeded, this killing would have potentially had the most far-reaching consequences imaginable, including no ‘New Deal’, a less powerful industrial machine which might not have been able to support Britain in World War II and a completely different leader of the USA during that war. Indeed, the whole world as we know it today would probably be a very different place had Zangara not been so short that he needed to stand on a chair on that day. Life really does hang by the thinnest of threads at times.

FDR (right) on his inauguration day, 4th March, 1933, with former President Hoover, less than three weeks after the assassination attempt. His chances of getting elected today would be pretty thin: a chain-smoking, heavy drinking man from a very wealthy family, known as a bit of a snob and a flirt who cheated on his wife by having many affairs…but he turned out to be one of the most important leaders of the 20th century. And it all nearly ended in Florida but for a wobbly chair. (Author: Photograph from Architect of the Capitol, AOC no. 18241; Source: here)

Pope John Paul II – 1981.

Pope John Paul II (1920-2005, Pope from 1978-2005) was one of the most charismatic religious leaders of the Twentieth Century. As Cardinal Karol Wojtyła of Krakow in Poland, he was elected Pope on 16th October, 1978, following the sudden death of Pope John Paul I after only 33 days in office. He was different to any Pope elected in living memory: at 58, he was considered very young to be elected to the highest office in the church; he was Polish; he was the first non-Italian Pope for over 400 years; he had lived under Communism for three decades – and he had arrived with an energy rarely seen before in the Vatican. Following his election, things looked set to change but few would have appreciated the impact Pope John Paul would have on the church itself but also on the world at large.

One thing that was immediately clear, though, was the extraordinary boost his election gave to many Polish people who were, despite having lived under atheistic Communism since 1945, still predominantly, and devoutly, Catholic. But all of this was very nearly cut short as on 13th May, 1981, Pope John Paul was attending one of his regular public audiences in the square in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. From the crowd, shots rang out and the Pope collapsed having been hit by four bullets. He suffered severe loss of blood and the attempted assassination failed by less than an inch as one of the bullets passed so close to his heart.

The potential assassin was over-powered by on-lookers, including some nuns in the crowd, and he was later imprisoned. His name was Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish man, who was almost certainly working on behalf of the KGB (the USSR’s Secret Service) and the Bulgarian Secret Service, the same group which probably did for Georgi Markov in London in 1978. The Pope did survive and had a major impact on the collapse of Communism: his numerous trips to Poland were hugely influential in giving confidence to the people and strengthening their belief that Communism could be defeated. This period also coincided with the rise of ‘Solidarity’, the Trade Union which was, along with the Catholic Church, the focus for anti-Communist activity in Poland during the 1980s.

If Pope John Paul II had died in 1981, it is interesting to consider what impact it would have had on Polish resistance and the rise of ‘Solidarity’, as well as the final collapse of Communism. There may have been an uprising that would have drawn the USSR, then under the leadership of the ill and ageing Leonid Brezhnev, into action similar to that seen in Hungary in 1956. The world of speculative history could lead us into many scenarios but the truth is that he survived and events were as they were and as Pope, John Paul played a major role in opposing Communism, a role which contributed to its eventual collapse after 1989.

What we also know, though, is that rather like with Lenin in 1918, the shooting did have long term consequences because the Pope was never as physically robust afterwards as he was before and it probably accelerated the on-set of Parkinson’s Disease from which he suffered later in life. And although he lived until the age of 84, there are many who believe he was so fit and strong before the assassination attempt, that he would have lived far longer but for the shooting.

Pope John Paul II visits Poland in 1979. The crowds were a huge shock and a threat to the Communist leadership. (Author: Unknown; Source: here)

Steve Biko – 1977.

Most people associate resistance to apartheid with Nelson Mandela. Mandela has become one of the world’s most famous and respected politicians but fewer people today remember Stephen Bantu Biko, one of the inspirational figures who led resistance on the ground during the years that political leaders like Mandela and Jacob Zuma were in prison.

Steve Biko (1946-1977) was a political activist, an opponent of the white supremacist system which had been institutionalised with the apartheid laws of 1948 and after. A key moment in his politicisation was the arrest of his brother which took place while he was a teenager at Lovedale Institute in Durban. Biko himself was interrogated by police and, after just three months at Lovedale, he was forcibly expelled. As someone who valued education, in line with his father’s values, the young Steve Biko developed a deep and lasting animosity towards white authority. Biko made education of oppressed South Africans his main goal and instilling ‘Black consciousness’ became his abiding ambition and his legacy.

Biko managed to continue his own education, going to the University of Natal to study medicine although his progress was limited by his political activities. He was a very talented and capable student but he was de-registered from his course in medicine because he fell so far behind, a result of his time given to political activism. In 1968, he formed SASO, the South African Students Organisation, which sought to establish ‘Black Consciousness’ in the lives of the South African people, especially students. Obviously this was a radical organisation which was pro-Black and, by definition, anti-White, and as President of SASO, Biko was increasingly under the watch of the authorities. As SASO and the Black Consciousness Movement grew in influence its character and focus developed. Biko was placed under house arrest but managed to remain active, establishing literacy courses and practical classes in the townships and even setting up a clinic outside King William’s Town, where he was confined.

Steve Biko was a powerful figure in South Africa in the 1970s. His ideas and values inspired many others and the Black Consciousness Movement was undoubtedly influential in the most famous uprising of the decade, the Soweto riots of June 1976. It was a year after these riots in the huge township on the outskirts of Johannesburg that Biko was arrested. He was a fit, strong and healthy man when he was arrested and only the violent actions of some very angry men could have caused the horrendous brain injuries that killed him 0n 12th September, 1977.

Steve Biko’s death may not have been an ‘assassination’ in the true sense of the word but there is no doubt that it was a politically motivated act. Apartheid was a most brutal system and Steve Biko was its most high profile and important victim. He was killed by the legal authorities who exercised power within that system of apartheid. The people responsible for his death were never put on trial. The inquiry into his death was delayed by the South African government and eventually it actually cleared the police of any fault even though the cause of death was serious brain damage; it was rather difficult to see how a person could inflict such injuries on himself. The bitterness around Biko’s death, and the way the event was treated, served to foster a deep resentment in the black and coloured community.

In 1994, at the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, five police officers who admitted involvement in Biko’s death were denied an amnesty. His story became known in the wider world thanks to a book called ‘Biko’ which was written by Donald Woods, a white South African who was a newspaper editor and a friend of Steve Biko. It was later made into a film, ‘Cry Freedom’ starring Denzil Washington and Kevin Kline. And ‘Biko’, one of the great protest songs, was a tribute to him by Peter Gabriel.

Chico Mendes – 1988.

In an age when we have become used to the high profile given to ecological and environmental issues, such as deforestation, over-fishing and climate change, it is easy to forget that not that long ago such concerns were almost unknown to most people. Nowadays, most people who support environmental causes are seen as caring and sensible people who have an important message for all but in the recent past such people would have been dismissed as fools or worse. However, even today there are many opponents to those who seek to protect the environment. most of them being linked with big business, such as the energy and fast food companies. From the poaching of ivory in Africa to fracking in the USA and Europe, to the destruction of tuna in the Mediterranean and the destruction of trees and tribes in the Amazon, the struggle to protect the environment goes on in so many regions of the world, the battle being waged against those who seek the exploitation of the world’s finite resources for their own short term financial gain.

One of the important names in the ecology movement was a man called Francisco Alves Mendes Filho, better known as Chico Mendes (1944-88). I first heard of Chico Mendes on a song called ‘Amazon’ by the great folk singer, Eric Bogle, a man who has given voice to many forgotten heroes and underdogs; its themes like this that lead many historians to value folk music. Anyway, Chico Mendes was one of the pioneers of resistance to the logging, agriculture, mining and energy companies who were determined to take advantage of the natural resources in the Amazon rainforest. He was a self-educated rubber-tapper who opposed the injustices that left workers in debt to the big companies and also stood against the Brazilian government for the incentives it gave to businesses that wanted to slash and burn the forest for beef production. He galvanised the Amazon Indians and local workers into credible opposition and eventually received the support of the World Bank and the US Congress over the way Brazilian development was funded.

In doing this, of course, Mendes and his supporters made many enemies. In the 25 years of protest, over 1000 people were murdered, often after being arrested and tortured by the police who used bribery to control them and the politicians. Chico Mendes was a passionate man, an organiser and negotiator who united many ordinary people and created a mass movement. He was a protector of the rainforest long before the word ‘ecologist’ had become known and long before most people even saw a threat to the Amazon.

Over many years, powerful individuals and big companies abused their wealth and status, influencing judges and politicians to enable them to continue their exploitation of the forest for mining and farming, forcing native peoples and others from the jungle and punishing Mendes and his supporters with imprisonment and fines. In the end, one rancher, Alves da Silva, decided to get rid of Chico Mendes and he was shot just as he left his home on 22nd December, 1988. This marked a turning point in the defence of the Amazon as Mendes’ assassination became a high-profile incident that raised awareness and anger levels around the world.

Recent events in Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, as well as other Amazonian states, have shown that the assassinations at the hands of the logging and mining companies, as well as drug cartels, continue. The slaughter of numerous ‘unknown’ tribes with the destruction of their cultural heritage and the loss of these people who have lived in harmony with the rainforest for generations is a stain on the modern world which can never be washed away. The bullying and greed which stand behind these decisions which attack the most vulnerable people and the environment itself points to something tragically wrong and short-sighted in society.

Chico Mendes may have been one of the first to die for trying to protect the environment but he was certainly not the last. And the struggle to stand up to those who exploit and destroy in the name of short-term profits will be with us for years to come.

Chico Mendes: one of the first modern ecologists to die for their beliefs. (Author: Miranda Smith, Miranda Productions Inc; Source: here)

Find out more:

For further information regarding the assassinations and attempted assassinations of all five of these people, the internet is the best starting point. There are few easily accessible books about McKinley; by contrast there are too many about FDR. And with a recent religious figure like Pope John Paul II, the danger of opinions being too extreme makes for finding a balanced analysis difficult.

Steve Biko: ‘Biko’ by Donald Woods (Penguin, 1987); ‘the film ‘Cry Freedom’ (1987) and the song ‘Biko’ by Peter Gabriel

Chico Mendes: ‘The Burning Season’ by Andrew Revkin (Shearwater Books, 2004); the song ‘Amazon’ by Eric Bogle on ‘Voices in the Wilderness’ (1991).

Communism: A fine idea but a failed experiment

“Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ‘The Communist Manifesto’.

Well, here’s a happy topic and one which you have been looking forward to, no doubt, with some eager anticipation: Communism. This was a political ideology that a lot of people around the world used to believe in when there were political ideologies to believe in. Some countries are still called ‘Communist’ but it has fallen away so quickly since 1990 that it is becoming difficult for many people to remember just what Communism was all about. And it is almost impossible to recall just how frightening and threatening the Communist system was to those of us growing up in the Western world, the world of capitalism and democracy, a world fighting an epic battle for ‘good’ against ‘evil’. People recall things like, ‘They built a wall, didn’t they?’, but the general view is that ‘It failed, so it can’t have been much good’. But what was Communism all about? Why did people believe in it? Why was it so frightening? And why did it ‘fail’? So here begins a quick look at the most famous left-wing policy of them all.

‘Communism’ as a word that looks very like ‘commune’, ‘common’ and ‘community’, which is just as it should be for its focus is on the community over the individual. There is nothing unusual in stressing the importance of community in human history, of course, for every family, tribe and settlement has been a reflection of the human need to belong to a group. No child can survive without someone to care for them. Few, if any, individuals have all of the knowledge and skills needed to survive completely in isolation. It is natural for people to give to a group in some way and to receive from it. So where did this ‘frightening’ ideology come from if it was in some ways an expression of something so natural?

‘Communism’, or ‘Marxism’ as it is often known,as a political system is the name for the extreme left-wing ideology originally developed by two Germans, Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), in the middle of the nineteenth century. You will almost certainly have heard of Marx, a German philosopher, journalist, historian and revolutionary, although you might not be aware of Engels, his main supporter and collaborator. In simple terms, Marx did the writing and the thinking while Engels provided the money and other support to allow him to work. Before we look in more detail at these two fascinating characters, we should have a photo of the memorial to them in Berlin which reminds us of just what fine facial hair these two revolutionaries developed. They are a serious contrast to the modern, image obsessed politicians who lead most modern governments.

A close-up of the statue of Marx and Engels in Schlossplatz, Berlin. (Author: Manfred Brückels; Source: here)

There was some graffiti painted onto this statue after the collapse of Communism in East Germany in 1989: ‘It was not our fault!’ This was a very reasonable point, really, as what came to be called ‘Communism’ was rather different from what Marx and Engels intended. The truth is that the system which we know as ‘Communism’, the system of Lenin, Stalin and Mao, of the USSR, China and North Korea, the ideology that so threatened the West in the Cold War era, was a long way from being that envisioned by Marx and Engels. There was definitely a breakdown between the ‘planners’ and the ‘producers’ when it comes to communism. There was actually a rather heated debate in Berlin about whether or not this monument to the ‘founders’ of Communism should be kept or removed after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989; it was surely both a good and a necessary thing that it has remained in place as it would have been too easy for people to deny or ignore the past. In a world lacking ideology and integrity in the political world, the statue is a reminder that people have thought differently in the past – even if their ideas have not been successful or accepted. If success were the only criteria, it might be logical that all religious iconography in Western Europe would be torn down for a start – and as for the split between the original visions of the religious founders and the modern expressions of their ideas…well, that is a whole other story.

So, back to our finely bearded protagonists, especially Karl Mark. Marx was a German, born in 1818 in the town of Trier, near the border with Luxembourg and France. He was from a Jewish background being the son of a rabbi in a family of rabbis. His family can be described as upper-middle class family and he enjoyed a privileged upbringing. Marx went to the University of Bonn before moving on to the University of Berlin where he came under the influence of the ideas of Georg Hegel. Hegel had said, ‘Philosophy is its own time raised to the level of thought’ (in ‘Elements of the Philosophy of Right’), a phrase open to much debate but one which the young Marx and others took as a call to action that challenged the established order in Germany. Hegel believed that the only way to understand things in the present was to see them as a part of some unrelenting or irresistible march of freedom, truth and reason. This idea suggested that human freedom would come about as a result of this ‘progress’. Alongside this ideology, the rejection of religion as a valid means of understanding or addressing life and real issues was a key theme, centred on the work of another philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach.

Marx’s radical ideas did not go down well in the university and he was blocked by the authorities from continuing his academic career and so he moved to Paris and worked as a journalist. In Paris, Marx met up with many German thinkers and activists who had left their country to escape the oppression of living under a dictatorship. In France just half-a-century after the French Revolution, his radical ideas were considered more ‘normal’ than in Prussia. Marx saw a more aggressive and, for him, advanced working class challenging the control and oppression that they suffered at the hands of the powers in the state, such as the politicians, church authorities and business leaders. He studied History and Social Sciences, both in Paris and, later, in Brussels, developing his observation that the more workers contributed to the capitalist system, the more they were alienated from the final outcomes, namely, the rewards, the profits. The workers might create great things through their skills and labour but they never had the chance to own them or to share fully in the profits; these belonged to the oppressive ‘bosses’ of society, the owners, the authorities. This sense of injustice and inequality in the means of wealth production became the heart of his idea of a ‘class struggle’; the alienation of workers seen in the control and exploitation of the proletariat by the landowners, nobility and the bourgeoisie under capitalism was to become the background for revolution.

By the time he met Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels had already spent some time in England, much of it in England. With its many cotton mills, Manchester stood at the heart of the ‘Industrial Revolution’, and, therefore, represented an expression of capitalism in its fullness. Industry had transformed the British landscape and society and, through its huge and growing Empire, it was shaping change across the globe. The population of Britain was growing and moving from the countryside to the towns; mechanisation was revolutionising employment; fortunes were being made but many of the people were being thrust into poverty. The experiences of Britain were being echoed in the rapid changes of European economies, too. Engels was actually from a reasonably wealthy family that was involved in mills and textile production, one of the bosses or ‘exploiters’. It is interesting to note that it was only through the money he made as a boss that Engels was able to support Marx in his revolutionary work. He is far less famous than Marx, so a proper picture might help at this point, especially as it gives another chance to admire his beard, an absolute gem of its kind. Actually, let’s put Marx in as well as they were such a team. You could lose a couple of small squirrels in their facial growth and they wouldn’t feel a thing.

The reason why Engels knew England so well was that, in the early 1840s, he had been sent to Manchester to help run his father’s cotton mill. While he was there he became interested in the condition of the workers, believing they struggled under inhumane conditions. His studies led to the publication of an important book, which was ignored by most people at the time. This was, ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’ (1845). It’s interesting to compare Engels’ findings with those of Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree some fifty years later because it shows how so much in life is about having the right message for the right audience at the right time. Engels’ message was a clear warning of what Booth and Rowntree later identified but for some reason his work had little impact at the time; it’s really not the validity of what you have to say so much as the willingness of the audience to hear it which matters in so many areas of life.

Anyway, Engels was horrified by the terrible living conditions he found in places like Saint Helens, Oldham and Manchester itself. The depth and the extent of poverty amongst the workers was frightening, their poor health was a great concern and, most of all, the injustice was intolerable in his eyes. The gap between rich and poor was stark and growing greater each day as privileged employers exploited the workers for profit. Engels first met Marx in Paris in 1844 and they struck up an immediate friendship based on their sense of injustice about the impact of industrial change with Marx coming at it from a philosophical angle, Engels from his practical experience. At about the same time, Marx also made contact with the ‘Communist League’ which had developed from ‘The League of the Just’, an organisation set up by German workers who had emigrated from their homeland in the previous decade. While in Brussels in 1847, Marx joined Engels in attending a conference of the ‘Communist League’. The speech that he gave there was an expression of their ideas as formed over the previous years and it was published the following year as the ‘Communist Manifesto’, one of the most famous documents of the century.

Although Marx was the thinker and visionary, Engels played a crucial role in bringing the ‘Manifesto’ into existence. He supported Marx financially during these years, giving him the royalties from his book as a way of supporting his friend while he developed his philosophy. Engels’ support enabled Marx to commit himself entirely to his reflections as it allowed him to read, write and travel free from any financial pressure. The publication of the ‘Communist Manifesto’ was actually a development of a piece of Engels’ own work which was called ‘The Principles of Communism’. Marx took this and developed it into the manifesto itself, foreseeing a class struggle which would end with ‘World Revolution’ and the overthrow of the oppressive business owners and landowners, the so-called bourgeoisie. The ‘Workers’ or the ‘Proletariat’, would rise up and establish a new system where everything was shared in common; there would be a classless society of total equality. This utopian ideal was rooted in the injustice Engels had seen and smelt in the slums of northern England; its goal was justice, fairness, equality and opportunity for all at the expense of the privileged few. Apart from the expected violence which would be necessary in the initial stages of the revolution, the vision was almost religious in its aims and values.

‘The Communist Manifesto’ was published in February, 1848, just as Europe was on the verge of one of the most traumatic years in its history. The pamphlet seemed to be truly of its time because risings of workers in 1848 threatened every major European country except Britain – and, even there, tensions rose with the revolutionary demands of the Chartists. It was known as the ‘Year of Revolution’ as France, Spain Austria and Germany all experienced major political change and radical social upheaval loomed large in the political consciousness. Having spoken of risings of the workers, it all seemed set to come true and Marx and Engels were among those happy to see the uprisings which threatened to tear the continent apart during the summer of 1848. Their ideas expressed a new vision which came to inspire many intellectuals and idealists, as well as the lower classes, but made enemies of the established ‘powers’, the politicians, the monarchs, the churches and the business leaders. In the face of these troubles in Europe, and the inflammatory nature of their words, both Marx and Engels were expelled from Belgium.

Without going into great detail about the ‘Communist Manifesto’ itself, it might be interesting to see a summary of the demands of the Communist Party in Germany from this period. They indicate something of the goals of the party if not their strategies or arguments. Not all of these arguments seem very frightening today but in the mid-19th century, they terrified many leading figures in politics, society and the churches.

Demands of the Communist Party in Germany

The whole of Germany shall be declared a single indivisible republic.

Representatives of the people (MP’s) shall be paid so that workers also can sit in the parliament of the German people.

Universal arming of the people.

The estates of the princes and other feudal estates, all mines, pits, etc., shall be transformed into state property. On these estates, agriculture is to be conducted on a very large scale and with the most modern scientific means for the benefit of all society.

Mortgages on peasant holdings shall be declared state property; interest on such mortgages shall be paid by the peasants to the state.

In the districts where tenant farming is developed, land rent or farming dues shall be paid to the state as a tax.

All means of transport: railway, canals, steamships, roads, post, etc., shall be taken over by the state. They are to be converted into state property and put at the disposal of the non-possessing class free of charge.

Limitation of the right of inheritance.

Introduction of a steeply graded progressive taxation and abolition of taxes on consumer goods.

Establishment of national workshops. The state shall guarantee a living to all workers and provide for those unable to work.

Universal free elementary education.

Having been forced from Belgium, Marx and Engels made their way to London, where Marx himself would settle for the rest of his life. London was a very tolerant and open society for revolutionaries in those days, and many outsiders from Europe found their way there. Marx eventually died in 1883 and is buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery alongside some other famous names including Michael Faraday, George Eliot, Christina Rosetti and Douglas Adams. Key places linked with him in London include: the Reading Room at the British Museum where he wrote his famous work, ‘Das Kapital’; Covent Garden where meetings of the First International took place; and Hampstead Heath where he used to enjoy trips out with his family on Sundays. While Marx was in England, he was protected by the British Government of the time on the grounds of allowing people to express their ideas, which is an interesting situation as he was effectively considered to be a terrorist by some states. Britain’s interest was always in its Empire and helping rebels who annoyed the European powers was almost a pleasure for the Government at the time. Marx was not allowed back to Germany but Engels did return there to work for his father but regularly visited London and he continued to support Marx financially.

After Marx’s death, Engels publicised his work, writing commentaries and making it more suitable for publication. Neither lived to see the ‘Communist Revolution’ and they would have been shocked to see what happened in Russia and the world in the years after 1917. They had fully expected revolution to happen in an advanced industrial country, such as Britain or Germany, where the exploitation of the masses created the conditions for a true uprising. They had thought that revolution had come in 1848 when Europe was thrown into turmoil, and were dismayed that the moment passed without the sweeping changes they expected. They both died having changed politics and philosophy but without seeing the fulfilment of their dream – and they would almost certainly have had some questions for Lenin and others in terms of what was done in their name in the Twentieth Century.

Obviously Marx and Engels were revolutionaries who wanted the overthrow of oppressive powers in society but would they have recognised or approved of what came to be known as ‘Communism’? Would they have been admirers of Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong or Fidel Castro? Was the Communism of the USSR and China, North Korea and Cuba, what Marx had in mind? Did these systems address the issues as Engels saw them? It seems highly unlikely that they would have been in total agreement with the reality of ‘communism’, but that’s what tends to happen when other people get hold of your ideas in a different place and at a different time. It’s a bit like writing a song, releasing it yourself to no particular acclaim and then discovering that it’s been covered by Chris de Burgh, Lady Gaga and Primal Scream; the words might be the same but you never thought it would come out quite like that. You get the idea, anyway.

So, what was ‘Communism’ supposed to be? What was it supposed to change? In the ideological world, ‘Pure Communism’ was to mean a number of things: there would be no private ownership of property or business; people would work according to their skills and be paid according to their needs; people would live in the same accommodation as each other and there would be no classes; there would be no nations due to people being united by their bond as ‘workers’ rather than any idea of nationality; there would be no need for democracy and elections as there would be unity amongst the people, a shared vision and absolute freedom as all would be united in one community. The words of ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon come to mind in some ways.

One particular area of controversy was Communism’s approach to religion and the churches. For Marx and Engels, there would be no organised religion as this was a tool by which the powerful in society controlled the people, allowing them to believe that troubles here on earth might bring pain but they would eventually be compensated by the glories of heaven. The churches, therefore, preached a message of cooperation with the authorities which allowed exploitation and oppression to be maintained. In return, the leaders of the churches were allowed privileges alongside the highest in the land as long as they ensured the people were loyal, committed and passive; in the mean time, the powerful could enjoy their rewards here and now. Marx’s view on religion was expressed in one of his most famous quotes but one which is usually misquoted: ‘Religion is the opium of the people’. Just so you know it but don’t show yourselves up by misquoting it, here it is in full:

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.Karl Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’

It should be noted that this is not quite as negative about religion as it might sound. It speaks of religion as the ‘heart’ of a ‘heartless world’. At the time, opium or heroin was commonly used as a pain-killer so Marx was saying that organised religion acted as an anaesthetic against the pains of everyday life for the poor. The real evil for Marx lies in the system, capitalism, and not with religion which seeks to help alleviate the suffering of so many oppressed by that system. The religious authorities, though, collaborated with the economic and political powers, emphasising the glories of the next world over the need for justice in this one, and so allowed religion to support the oppression of the workers. In this, Marx would probably have been concerned by the aggressive actions of Lenin, Stalin and others in seeking to destroy the churches. Khrushchev’s decision, for example, to take his first wife’s coffin over a wall rather than have her carried through a Russian Orthodox Church on the way to her grave would have struck Marx as foolish, unnecessary and misguided.

It is obvious to see why Communism made enemies and, in the end, failed. Taking the second point first, Communism failed because most people are, to a greater or lesser extent, selfish. As long as you care more about people you know than people you don’t know, Communism cannot work as people do not see everyone in the world as equally important or as their ‘brother and sister’. Full unity is not possible when family ties, nationality, race, culture, language, gender, age and a dozen other factors can cause divisions that are anything from a hindrance to an insurmountable obstacle. Marx never really took full account of the individual in his system; the dream of being special is there in most people, and being or feeling at least slightly different, slightly better, slightly wealthier, slightly better dressed and slightly happier than others means that true equality does not appeal to many people, if any.

Of equal importance in the failings of Communism was that fact that its enemies were many and they were powerful. It’s easy to see who they were and why they were unhappy. They were the established authorities who had status, power and influence in social, economic, political and religious terms. Communism did not choose its enemies wisely, raising anxiety amongst landowners and business leaders, monarchs and the nobility, church leaders and politicians. And alongside these groups were many individuals who aspired to belong to those groups, living by values which were in direct contrast with those of Communism. It is possible to see Marx and Engels as incredibly naïve, rooting their theory in the idea of unity amongst peoples who would define themselves as ‘workers’, embracing unknown ‘others’ against those with whom they already had some bond: language, religion, race, culture, family, friendship. And the idea that such a unity might exist for ever after the removal of the common enemy, the oppressive leaders of society and industry, was equally extreme.

The response shown by so many people at the death of Princess Diana in 1997 was a rare example of an outpouring of emotion for someone few people actually knew – but it was an emotion not shared by everyone. (Author: Maxwell Hamilton; Source: here)

The fatal flaw in Communism, therefore, was its failure to grasp what motivated real people. As mentioned above, people usually care more about people they know rather than people they don’t know. They tend to be selfish and look for their own survival (individually and as a group) which is why ‘true’ martyrs are so rare, those who will die for an idea or to save someone they do not know at all. People are more than theories and ideals; most need something real and practical too. The highly committed believers may meet, debate, argue and really live out their ideology but most people see them as ‘fanatics’, and get on with their own lives: work, home, food, leisure, competition, savings, dreams and so on tend to dominate life for ordinary people. When fanatics take over, be they religious, political or whatever, then ordinary people tend to get bored, confused, angry and demoralised. One only has to see what happens when the ‘World Cup’ comes along every four years. The committed football fan gets excited; the majority at best tolerate it, maybe watching the odd game, during which they will probably annoy the true fan by asking questions that are either distracting, simplistic or irritating: Which team’s in blue? Why do they kick each other? Just what does ‘off-side’ mean? They are not as bothered or as obsessed as the true fanatic. Marx, Lenin and others never grasped this fundamental issue and the failure to convince ordinary people of the nature and benefits of ‘true’ Communism was a key to its eventual demise.

Despite these problems, Communism can and does exist but only rarely and on a small scale. It can be seen in highly motivated, ideological communities, two examples being some religious communities (monasteries) and on a kibbutz. Looking at a monastery, those who enter do so of their own choice and make a life-long commitment, although that can be broken. They take various vows: poverty means not seeking or receiving particular rewards for your work, which brings a clear form of equality; obedience means that your own ideas and values are not imposed on others or used to argue with others, as you accept your role within the running of the larger community, another form of equality; a vow of chastity is often taken, not just an issue around marriage or sex, but a commitment of equality in friendship and belonging with all in the community. The leader of the community is chosen by the community itself, serving the whole group in a way that protects them and leaves them free to do what they need to do. The leader serves for a set period of time before returning to the ranks as an ordinary member of the community. Communism is possible and has worked in the past but it is rare, not for all and requires certain conditions to be met. It demands total commitment and belief in the system and the values it proclaims. It must also be freely chosen and not imposed on the unwilling. Many people are religious and have enough belief to go to a church, mosque or temple regularly; but the majority are not motivated to give their lives over to it. In the same way, Communism appealed to a core group ideologically, made sense to some in particular circumstances but never appealed to the majority as a way of life. It does not mean the ideology itself was ‘bad’, it just never had enough rewards or made enough sense to people who had other values.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were not ‘bad’ men, as some people try to portray them. In many ways they were visionaries who expected change in the name of justice and equality for all. It’s not that they were wrong, it’s just that too many key people thought they were wrong; they ignored certain things about ordinary people and made enemies of too many powerful people because that ‘justice and equality for all’ thing’ is just a bit too much to take. In many ways, their are many people suffering because of capitalism today who probably wish their full vision had come to dominate the world. Exploitation and oppression remain but, with rampant individualism and consumerism in the ascendancy, communism is unlikely to be anything other than a footnote in history for some time to come.

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